


Discernment

by goldarrow



Series: Timeline!verse [7]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 01:56:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20399788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldarrow/pseuds/goldarrow
Summary: Things get messy on a shout.





	Discernment

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures, not me. I will return them when I’m done, slightly mussed but in superb spirits.
> 
> Lyle and Finn belong to fredbassett, who kindly lends them out.

Fucking hell, I was tired of landing on my arse in the mud. Especially when I was tossed there by a creature that looked, and felt, as big as a lorry when it came barrelling out of the anomaly and straight for me, smacking me with its shoulder as it passed by, probably without even knowing I was there. 

From what I managed to see before the damned thing knocked me base over tip, it was some kind of ceratopsian; not a Triceratops, the frill was too light and the horns bent upwards, but it was big, close to 1500 kilos. And much faster than anyone expected it to be, based on the shouts and sounds of people scrambling out of the way around me. I hadn’t had time to do more than make what was probably a rather unmanly squeaking noise before I discovered just how solid the creature’s hide was, and how soft a frill it sported. When it ran into me, I was sure that the extremely impressive decoration it wore was going to slice me open like a knife through a melon, but I was lucky this time. The frill wasn’t stiff or hard, it was actually rather supple as the edge raked my side. 

The creature’s shoulder, on the other hand, was very hard. And very large. What the frill didn’t damage, the shoulder made a good job of. It thumped into me, hard; slap onto my right arm, of course. The bad arm. The one that had been damaged last year by the creatures in the bunker. The one that was finally - finally - healed and working properly. 

The only good thing was that I was already moving, so the creature simply added a turbo-boost to my attempt to leap out of its way. I spun around a little, and landed, again, on the bad shoulder. What the fuck is it about an injury that makes absolutely certain that whenever something happens, it happens to that same place? 

Once I landed, I lay there for a second, trying to catch my breath. Over my own curses, I heard Connor off to the right side yelling something about a Chasmosaurus, so I assumed that was what had just dumped me into the mud. Lovely mud. Very viscous. Very glutinous. But I’d rather have been admiring it from a distance, so I tried to stand up. That plan turned out to contain a slight miscalculation: haste was not a good idea. My feet slid out from under me and I landed on my face this time. Which made me change my mind about the attractiveness of the mud. It was awful mud. Tasted like something died in it. 

I spat it out and resisted wiping my face with my hand after one quick glance showed me that I was pretty much mud from head to toe. Charming. This time, I tried to rise a little more slowly. I made it to my knees and stared around, hoping that everyone else was all right. The anomaly had opened in the middle of a forest, one that was almost orchard-like in the spacing of what looked like recently-planted pines, many of which were now lying on their sides, snapped off at the base. I had managed to slip and land in a furrow washed out by the heavy rains of the last few days.

My partial recovery hadn’t taken as long as I’d thought; I turned around to face the anomaly again and Abby was just starting to run toward Cutter, who was still standing on the left, his mouth open and his hand coming up to reach out and brace Connor. The computer whiz was sitting on the ground beside Cutter with his netbook in one hand, typing madly with the other and yelling out facts and figures about the Chasmosaurus. Hardly anyone seemed to be listening to him at the moment, since all of the Special Forces team - bar Finn and Ryan - were chasing madly after the creature as it scampered (as well as such a large beast could scamper, anyway) away from the anomaly, weaving its way through the trees. Well, sort of weaving. It seemed to be taking out much of the new growth, only paying any attention to things that were too large for it to mow down.

Finn and Ryan were standing on my right, watching the anomaly carefully, having seemingly had the same thought I was giving head space to at this particular moment: what the fuck could make something two and a half metres tall and over five metres long run away that fast? Whatever it was, the Chasmosaurus had been frightened enough that it wasn’t noticing anything in its way. Which meant whatever was chasing it was something I really didn’t want to have anything to do with. I had to get out from in front of the time-rip. I was a sitting duck; or rather a kneeling duck, holding position right beside the wide swath of open space created by the rampaging ceratopsian.

The anomaly wobbled. Something was about to come through. Saying as many profane things inside my head as I could, I managed to make it back to my feet and off to the side a little, onto solid ground, just as the pursuer came through. And all hell broke loose.

This creature I knew. After meeting the Tyrannosaurus rex pack a couple of years ago, I’d read up on every dinosaur related to them. This was Daspletosaurus, a marginally smaller, close relative of Tyrannosaurus. It was shaped like the T. Rex, had the typical tyrannosaurid two-fingered hands, but its powerful jaws were equipped with even larger teeth. Not quite as many, but still - larger. Why would anything need teeth larger than a T. rex? Fucking hell. Five metres tall, nine metres long, and as heavy as a female Asian elephant. I shook my head. The weirdest factoids would float to the surface of my brain at the oddest times. Female Asian elephant? Where the fuck did that come from? 

Never mind. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that I really needed to take the better part of valour. Right now. I dropped and rolled away from the mud and pushed myself behind a tree, shaking, as the Daspletosaurus roared its challenge. I could hear everyone else scrambling madly for cover and hoped that the creature wouldn’t consider Connor’s yelp and Abby’s squawk as signs of prey behaviour.

It didn’t. The massive predator had only one thing on its mind: the Chasmosaurus. Thank fuck for that. It passed by so close to me that the wind of its passage ruffled my hair, and I actually closed my eyes in the atavistic hope that if I couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see me. I usually like to face danger with my eyes wide open, but something about this creature, and the speed at which the situation had deteriorated, made me want to find a bed, pull the covers over my head and hide. 

So, having accepted and set aside my sudden descent into terror-stricken paralysis, I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. Then I wanted to close them again. Farther out and to the right, the Special Forces team had managed to get the Chasmosaurus turned and heading back toward the anomaly, mowing down more young trees in its still headlong flight. Crap, Lester was going to go spare at the replacement costs for this one. 

The herbivore hadn’t noticed the Daspletosaurus, yet. Ahead of me, the Daspletosaurus had stopped amongst the trees and was scenting the air, its eyes swivelling around as it searched for the prey it had lost. Having moved to the other side of the anomaly, Ryan and Finn were standing, weapons up and pointed at the creature in what would probably be a futile attempt to protect Abby, Connor and Cutter, who were standing behind them, their faces pale as they waited to see what the massive predator would do. Ryan’s gaze sought out mine, and he gave a wild grin and raised his weapon a little higher. I remembered with an internal cheer that the Special Forces team had been issued new weapons and 7.62mm rounds. They just might have the stopping power to take it down if they had to. 

And they just might have to, since the Daspletosaurus whipped its head around, tracking the Special Forces team chasing the Chasmosaurus as they finished their wide circle, stopped just outside the tree line and continued to drive and steer the ceratopsian back toward the anomaly from the side with a few well-placed bullets into the ground behind it. It looked like they were hoping that by keeping their distance, the Daspletosaurus would concentrate on the Chasmosaurus rather than any of the humans. If I stayed still, the ceratopsian would pass behind me and all I’d have to do is hope that the predator’s attention would be attracted by its movement and it would ignore the closer possible prey. If I could be considered prey, that is, since I was covered in mud and not about to move an inch as long as the Daspletosaurus was looking even marginally in my direction.

Unfortunately, the tyrannosaurid seemed confused, unsure what those strange beasts were that were making those loud noises, perhaps trying to steal its prey. It moved a couple of steps toward the fleeing Chasmosaurus, then stopped and turned toward the team chivvying it forward. I heard a few vicious words being spat out in Lieutenant Lyle’s voice as the Daspletosaurus roared again and started toward the team, having obviously decided that the other predators were of more importance than its former prey. Fuck. Three cheers for territoriality and short attention spans. My inner sarcasm meter spun around and cracked. Fuck again. If they managed to kill it, we were going to have an even more angry Lester on our hands. Daspletosaurus disposal certainly wouldn’t be on his list of desired to-dos today.

The Chasmosaurus passed behind me, still running, eyes swivelling madly back and forth between the predator it had finally noticed again, and the anomaly in front of it. That gave me an idea. Not one that Ryan was going to approve of, but an idea nonetheless. Hopefully the Daspletosaurus really did have a short attention span. 

Fingers metaphorically crossed, I yelled as loudly as I could, “Everybody, freeze!”

I must have put enough emphasis on those two words, because the only things that didn’t suddenly turn into statues were the two creatures. The Chasmosaurus was still close enough to me that if I could attract the attention of the Daspletosaurus, hopefully it would return its attention to its original prey. So I whistled. Loudly. Loudly enough that I hurt my own ears. Wincing, I whistled again, and the predator turned its head to find the source of the noise. 

There was nothing moving except the arse end of the Chasmosaurus as it finally scuttled through the anomaly. The tyrannosaurid roared in what sounded like baffled fury and took off after the other dinosaur again, clearly not wanting to lose sight of its dinner a second time. I started to slide behind the tree I was standing against, and managed to lose my footing. Again. Fuck. The Daspletosaurus rushed past me as I slid ignominiously into the furrow once more, this time making not a sound. I was perfectly happy to be buried in the hated mud, as long as the tyrannosaurid wasn’t paying any attention to me. In fact, I think I might have actually tried to burrow. Just a little. Unfortunately, burrowing into mud is rather futile. And messy. Very messy.

The thumping of the creature’s feet stopped. I gulped a little, and raised my head slowly to look around. No creature. Predator had followed prey back home. Thank fuck. I let my head fall down again, and took a deep breath. By this time, I didn’t care that the mud smelled like a combination of cat piss and rotten cabbage. It was free of dinosaurs, and that’s all I cared about.

“You stink.” 

Ryan’s voice above me made me peel my eyelids open. They squished. Yuk. I wondered what effect squishy eyelids would have on a stink-eye. So I tried one. No effect; he didn’t combust. Crap. Note to self: don’t bother attempting evil looks when covered in mud. 

Giving up on setting Ryan ablaze with my eyes, I grinned instead. “I know. But I’m alive. So right now, I don’t really care what I smell like.”

My lover grinned back as he yanked me to my feet. “Neither do I,” he replied as he pulled my face in for a muddy but thorough kiss, keeping our bodies separate. “But will you, for fuck’s sake, stop scaring the crap out of me?”

“Can’t promise that,” I said softly, leaning my forehead against his. “But I will promise that I’ll do my best not to get killed.”

“That’ll do,” he said, as he steered me at arm’s length toward the others, who were clustered around the anomaly, watching it as it flickered and closed. “But I think you’ll be riding alone in the back of the truck.”

I looked around as we neared the group, and the rest of the team suddenly started backing away from me with hilariously offended expressions on their faces. I laughed. “Worth it,” I said, with a jaunty salute to Cutter. “I just survived being knocked down by a Chasmosaurus, and being bait for a Daspletosaurus. Nothing else can touch me.” 

Then I suddenly had a thought. And a plan for getting Ryan apart from the others for a while. I grinned evilly and plastered my muddy body down the entire length of Ryan’s uniform, smearing him comprehensively. “Care to join me in the truck bed, lover?”

He shuddered and muttered a curse, glared at Lieutenant Lyle, who was laughing like a drain, then shook his head and joined in the general mirth. “You win.” He tossed his keys to Lyle and we headed for the Hilux, which was, luckily, parked upwind of the rest of the team.

It was going to be a long ride back to the ARC.


End file.
